University of Georgia

Beyond the Arch

Caleb Adams kneels in a darkened room looking at a plot of sand indoors.

The Spacecraftsman

Caleb Adams develops autonomous spacecraft for NASA. Before that, he helped UGA launch its first satellite into space.

Caleb Adams was one of those curious kids who was mesmerized by outer space—the mystery, the possibilities for new discoveries, and the futuristic gadgets that make space exploration possible. He once did an elementary school reading report on American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh and the discovery of Pluto.

“I always had space books and watched Carl Sagan’s (TV series) Cosmos,” he says.

Today, Adams is helping shape the future of humankind’s ventures into the cosmos. And that future is, well, small.

Adams BS ’18, MS ’20 works in Silicon Valley at NASA’s Ames Research Center, where he helps lead efforts to develop automated spacecraft to manage traffic in Earth’s low orbit and perhaps one day explore deep space. The satellites he helps develop are “self-driving,” so to speak, and work in concert with each other; each is small enough to pack into a carry-on suitcase.

But the first satellite he helped build and see launched into space was developed when he was a student at the University of Georgia.

Let’s Build

Despite his boyhood interests, Adams didn’t enroll at UGA expecting to work on space exploration. Instead, he came on a music scholarship to play trombone in the Redcoat Marching Band.

But Adams quickly gravitated toward grappling with technical challenges—the more challenging, the better. He built websites for local businesses before jumping into hackathons (collaborative engineering projects that last 24 to 48 hours) at UGA and other colleges. After developing a remotely operated telescope at one of these events, Adams and his buddies’ next challenge was to send something to space.

He plastered posters all over campus asking, “Do you want to make a spacecraft?”

His efforts got a huge response. With the help of fellow students and faculty, Adams co-founded the Small Satellite Research Laboratory, an interdisciplinary effort to send a spacecraft about the size of a 12-pack of soda into space. The lab won competitive funding from NASA and the Air Force Research Lab, beating out other schools like MIT to get Phase II funding to launch their satellite. 

The students built the satellites themselves with oversight from UGA faculty. The experience no doubt readied Adams for his career today.

“It is to this day, one of the most motivated teams I’ve ever worked with. One of the most enthusiastic teams I’ve ever worked with. Incredibly collaborative.”

Caleb Adams

“It’s like a systems engineering course for spacecraft. It takes you through the whole life cycle of building and operating these things.”

After earning his bachelor’s in computer science, Adams stayed on to work in the lab and earn a master’s in computer science, both degrees from the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. After years of work from dozens of students and faculty, UGA’s first small satellite launched in 2020 just after Adams started his first job at NASA. He met with other UGA small satellite lab alumni at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to see the launch.

Caleb Adams and an older man look intently at something off-camera.
Caleb Adams and NASA program element manager Jeremy Frank look over the software at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
A close-up of a tiny robot in the sand.
A scale-model of the VIPER rover inside the Lunar Lab at the NASA Ames Research Center.
A woman types on a computer in a computer lab.
Software and operations engineer Caroline Lassiter at her workstation in the Multi-Mission Operations Center at the NASA Ames Research Center. Lassiter, a UGA alumna, worked as a student in the Small Satellite Research Lab.

Space Traffic Control

Today, Adams is the project manager for distributed spacecraft autonomy and the deputy project manager for the Starling Mission.

The Starling Mission is testing the capabilities of a quartet of small autonomous satellites. The Starling satellites, each about the size of an old-school boombox with two flat, foldable solar panel wings attached to power their systems, work together as a team called a “swarm.” And the swarm maneuvers through low orbit and collects data.

One of the goals is to develop an autonomous air traffic control system in space to manage the thousands of satellites and spacecraft in Earth’s low orbit.

“You can imagine a situation like when you’re walking down the street, and you try to walk to the left and another person coming the other way goes to their right, and you keep trying to walk past them but can’t.”

That same technology could be used in the future as spacecraft swarms explore deep space.

This year, Adams and his team won a grant from NASA’s Early Career Initiative Program for their work on a low-light 3D mapping system that could illuminate hidden regions of our solar system.

A darkened image of a man with a computer observing a plot of sand indoors.
Georgia alumni and NASA project manager Caleb Adams with his laptop and a scale model of the VIPER rover inside the Lunar Lab at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
A zoomed-out view of a small academic building in front of a large tubular glass building.
The Shenandoah Plaza at the NASA Ames Research Center with a massive hangar in the background.
A young man in a blue polo at NASA poses behind computer equipment.
NASA project manager Caleb Adams with a model of the STARLING Multi-CubeSat satellite inside the Multi-Mission Operations Center.

Finding the Path

Looking back at his time in Athens, Adams is grateful for the range of opportunities he could explore at UGA.

“It feels like you can start on almost any path,” he says.

His Zell Miller Scholarship kept costs affordable. Other resources on campus, such as the Student Food Pantry, helped him stay focused on his interests. That work, and the collaboration that came with it, was a life-changing experience.

“It is to this day, one of the most motivated teams I’ve ever worked with. One of the most enthusiastic teams I’ve ever worked with. Incredibly collaborative. We all cared a lot about making something cool happen, and we felt good that there was progress towards that goal.”  

Written by: Aaron Hale

Photography by: Andrew Davis Tucker & NASA/Ames Research Center

Video by: Cade Massey

Design by: Kaiya Plagenhoef